Silent Frisco’s quiet revolution takes dance parties out of club

Updated 8:07 pm, Saturday, December 27, 2014

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok / Raphael Kluzniok / The Chronicle

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Above: Danie Hernandez of Chicago dances at the Silent Frisco area of the Treasure Island Music Festival. Below: Taishya Adams, 40, of Boulder, Colo., and friend Ryan Davis, 31, of S.F. dance to wireless music at an earlier event. less

Above: Danie Hernandez of Chicago dances at the Silent Frisco area of the Treasure Island Music Festival. Below: Taishya Adams, 40, of Boulder, Colo., and friend Ryan Davis, 31, of S.F. dance to wireless music ... more

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok / Raphael Kluzniok / The Chronicle

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Renee Aquino of San Francisco dances at a Silent Frisco party at the Treasure Island Music Festival in October.

Renee Aquino of San Francisco dances at a Silent Frisco party at the Treasure Island Music Festival in October.

Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

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People dance to the Jazz Mafia’s Silent Orchestra and DJ Slynk during a Silent Frisco event in September at Treasure Island.

People dance to the Jazz Mafia’s Silent Orchestra and DJ Slynk during a Silent Frisco event in September at Treasure Island.

Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle

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Chris Hallett plugs in headphones to charge them at a Silent Frisco event.

Chris Hallett plugs in headphones to charge them at a Silent Frisco event.

Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle

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Taishya Adams, 40, of Boulder, Colo., and friend Ryan Davis, 31, of San Francisco dance with headphones on at a Silent Frisco event in September.

Taishya Adams, 40, of Boulder, Colo., and friend Ryan Davis, 31, of San Francisco dance with headphones on at a Silent Frisco event in September.

Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle

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Allison Miller of San Francisco listens through wireless headphones while she checks her phone at the Silent Frisco area at the Treasure Island Music Festival.

Allison Miller of San Francisco listens through wireless headphones while she checks her phone at the Silent Frisco area at the Treasure Island Music Festival.

Photo: Raphael Kluzniok / The Chronicle

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Danie Hernandez of Chicago (center) dances at the Silent Frisco area at the music festival.

Danie Hernandez of Chicago (center) dances at the Silent Frisco area at the music festival.

Slynk DJs during a September event by Silent Frisco on Treasure Island.

Slynk DJs during a September event by Silent Frisco on Treasure Island.

Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle

Silent Frisco’s quiet revolution takes dance parties out of club

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One recent fall afternoon, hundreds of clubbers were taking part in a massive dance party on Treasure Island’s Great Lawn. There was a repurposed double-decker bus that opened up onto a stage featuring a rotating lineup of internationally known DJs and live musicians. In the crowd, people jumped up and down, threw their arms in the air and laughed excitedly.

But for anyone passing by, it must have looked like a curious scene because it was impossible to hear anything but the sound of shuffling feet in the grass.

This was a “silent disco” event thrown by San Francisco production company Silent Frisco, where revelers typically gather at unexpected venues, slip on wireless headphones and crank the music as loud as they like without disturbing their surroundings with the thumping beats, booming bass lines and towering speaker stacks.

For the past decade, Silent Frisco’s co-founders, DJ Robbie “Motion Potion” Kowal and John Miles of SunsetSF Promotions, have been throwing similar parties at a variety of left-field spots from Ocean Beach to Golden Gate Park, as well as at some of the Bay Area’s biggest musical happenings, such as the Treasure Island Music Festival and Outside Lands. They have taken the concept on the road, bringing it to subway platforms in New York, museums in Miami and the Santa Monica Pier. They also make regular appearances at corporate functions for companies like Oracle and Yahoo.

This week, Silent Frisco will be at the Sea of Dreams New Year’s Eve parties at the Bill Graham Civic, on Tuesday, Dec. 30, and Wednesday, Dec. 31; as well as at the Embarcadero Ice Rink for a special Silent Frisco on Ice event, on Sunday, Jan. 4.

Peculiar charm

Even with its widespread popularity, Silent Frisco still has a way of winning over newcomers with its peculiar charm.

“My favorite part is when you see someone staring at the headphones for the first time, putting them on and instantly smiling,” said Kowal. “It’s that moment of discovery. You see this big group of people moving around and you don’t know what’s going on, but when you put the headphones on it all makes sense.”

It’s not just novelty the promoters are after. The silent disco concept was born out of necessity in the late 1980s at England’s Glastonbury Festival, where local noise restrictions forced promoters to get creative with technology to keep the music going past curfew. When Kowal was tapped to introduce the format to the United States at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee in 2005, he immediately saw the practical possibilities.

“I was the festival’s resident DJ at the time,” he said. “Because I was down for anything and known for doing weird sets, they asked me to be the guinea pig. The headphones were low rent and the sound wasn’t that good. But the potential was obvious and immediate. It was clear to me right from the start it was going to solve some of my problems back home.”

At the time, Kowal and Miles were preparing for the North Beach Jazz Festival and entangled in a bitter political battle with the Washington Square neighborhood group, which was attempting to use a noise complaint as an excuse to curb the event.

“Music has been used as a nuisance to curtail public gatherings for a long time,” Kowal said. “As a promoter, silent disco allows me to get around dubious noise restrictions. It allows me to do an event anywhere at any time. Then public gathering becomes a pure civil right.”

It took some effort for the promoters to get the technology up to speed, with Sunset Frisco investing in more than 3,000 custom-designed, two-channel wireless headphones that could be used in a variety of environments.

“None of the major headphone companies sell these things,” Kowal said. “It was very difficult at first. It’s been a constant struggle to get our gear updated to meet the needs and expectations of our community.”

Silent Frisco also had to come up with a simple organizational system to distribute and reclaim the headphones at large parties, while making sure they remained functional and free of radio interference. Then there were the sanitization issues that had to be addressed.

“We’re in the detail business,” Kowal said. “There’s a hundred details that have to go right. I have a team of people obsessed with these questions.”

Back at the Treasure Island event, the rapper Emcee Infinite, who performed with the live group Jazz Mafia, reflected on the unusual set with the San Francisco skyline as the backdrop.

“It was so bizarre,” he said. “The only way you can tell what’s happening is by watching everybody’s body language. But once you get into it, it’s so much fun.”

Unlike a regular club, there were as many kids and dogs running around, having picnics and joining the general spirit of community as people getting into the groove.

“It really encourages conversation, because you can just slip the headphones off and you don’t have to yell over the music to talk to your friends,” said Megan O’Reilly of Oakland, a regular at Silent Frisco events. “It’s also a great way to meet new people because there’s this feeling that we’re all in this cool thing together. It’s OK to look kind of ridiculous and laugh at it.”

Pure expression

For the DJs, meanwhile, Kowal said it’s a much more pure form of expression.

“At clubs and concerts you’re only hearing 20 percent of what the artist wants you to hear — what you hear is people talking, ordering drinks, the music bouncing off three walls,” he said, surveying the crowd on the Great Lawn with his own headphones dangling around his neck. “People here are actively listening. That’s so rare in club and concert settings these days. People go to shows more often to hook up than listen to the music. At a silent disco, everybody is listening and everybody is dancing.”

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